Drew University Moodle

English 254: American Literature, pre-1900

Subjects and Citizens

This course explores Anglo-American literature from the founding of the US to the turn of the 20th century. Throughout, it emphasizes the transnational roots of American literature, exploring the multiplicity of contexts from which a national literature emerges. Topics include literary nationalism, Native American protest literature, race, slavery and freedom, transcendentalism, the gothic, gender and sexuality, the novel, realism, urbanization, and US imperialism. Authors include Wheatley, Jefferson, Irving, Apess, Emerson, Thoreau, Poe, Hawthorne, Stowe, Douglass, Melville, Whitman, Dickinson, Chesnutt, Gilman, and Du Bois.